Politics from the Palouse to Puget Sound

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

UW Study: No Evidence Global Warming Affecting Cascades Snowpack


First, Mark Albright. Now this. The PC Police at the University of Washington are not doing a very good job of having their meteorologists drink the Kool-Aid.
Despite previous studies suggesting a warmer climate is already taking a bite out of Washington's snowpack, there's no clear evidence that human-induced climate change has caused a drop in 20th century snow levels, according to a new study by University of Washington scientists.
Predictably, the same people who went after Albright (who is a co-author of this new study) are ranting.
"They're trying to forecast the next 20 years or so, and I don't think they can do it," said Alan Hamlet, a UW hydrologist who has written papers about historic Cascade Mountain snowpacks.
Huh? Isn't that what the Goracle has been doing?
Hamlet also criticizes some of the statistical analysis in the new study, saying it could exaggerate the role of decade-to-decade changes in ocean conditions while understating other potential influences, including global warming.

"I just don't think the science is there," Hamlet said.
And yet global warming alarmists have passed off this year's record cold and snowy winter in the Northwest as being a result of an unusually strong La Nina and not a reversal in planetary warming trends.

"Settled" science? Uh huh. Room for reasonable doubt? You bet.

4 comments:

April E. Coggins said...

I predict that very soon someone will come along and declare that more snow PROVES climate change/global warming is happening and man has caused it.

Paul E. Zimmerman said...

April -

I've seen people making that very claim. Global warming leads to more moisture in the atmosphere which leads to more precipitation falling as snow in higher elevations blah blah blah.

So the last time the glaciers advanced? It was because of yet unseen neanderthal SUVs.

Michael said...

You mean, this one?

Paul E. Zimmerman said...

Well, since that one was foot propelled, I believe it was the prehistoric "smart car."